Thursday, August 19, 2010

Discipline This

Now, this is tough to comment about since there's many sides to this argument, and I'm the lucky person who gets to talk about it.

When is it right for a mother to discipline children, and when should people butt in? When a 13 month old kicked her mother, who retaliated by slapping the child, a flight attendant stepped in.

Now, here's when it gets tricky. The flight attendant says that she saw the mother slap the child on the face, and upon retrieving the child and taking her to the back of the plane, the flight attendant finds that the child has a black eye.

The mother on the other hand says that she just "popped" the child on the legs to get her to listen, and that the black eye was from a dog bite.

... A dog bite. What the fuck?! Do you really expect us to believe that a dog bit your child and you didn't do anything to prevent it? Even if you didn't give the child the black eye yourself, letting her get near a dog that is angry enough to attack her is just bad parenting in and of itself!

Let's not forget that this is a 13 month old girl. She probably doesn't know she's doing anything bad in the first place. While some toddlers can express wide ranges of tantrums at this age, they would never need to be slapped or hit. Actually, you can still discipline a child of any age without resorting to violence.

Of course, the mother in question just brushes it off, saying that "It's ma child, I can discipline her however way I want". NO. This leads to child abuse, you sick fuck.

The father had the right idea, yelling at the mother to stop hitting the child. He should probably divorce the dumb bitch and take his daughter far away from her.

Now, here comes the tricky part: At what point should a stranger get in the way, such as flight attendants?

The line between child discipline and child abuse is very faint and a tricky can of worms to discuss.

I was smacked on the leg as a child if I misbehaved but I wouldn't call it child abuse; it only ever happened if I really did something bad. But 13 months old is far too young to be doing that.

I say well done to the flight attendant, but those situations are very tricky and can be dangerous for the interruptee. At least the attendant was in a position of responsibility; a general member of the public would have a harder time to make the same call.